There has been one key change to the story that we made this week. We changed the ending so that its raining and it's not nice weather at all but the old woman with Alzheimers still keeps saying "nice weather today isn't it?". This illustrates our point properly that she has lost herself and the setting of the rain illustrates the feelings of isolation and loneliness. The last shot changes to an exterior view of the old woman looking through the window and a slow pan out shows another resident being helped along with an umbrella outside or perhaps in another room. This is essential to making sure the audience know the final setting is a care home.
On Tuesday we had a full scheduled day of working on our project. We started by planning out our jobs, Guys jobs are character design and storyboarding. Megs jobs are set design and layout, and my jobs are writing the script and animation director, when it comes to production.
In terms of the script, i thought I'd start by just getting it all down on paper and writing a short story describing the narrative. I tried to be very descriptive because although some of the description will inevitably be lost in the visual representation, such as what the characters are thinking, these descriptions help the character designers and set designers get a better understanding of the characters and setting. Having the characters thoughts described before visually designing the characters is building the character from the inside out. Giving it a soul and then working out what that soul or essence of the character looks like visually.
The article below describes this idea, especially the section entitled 'connect the internal and external:'. It focuses on the animated film 'A Monster in Paris' in which the character design for the monster's face is a heart, this describes the character perfectly. Although everyone views him as a monster, he is really a sweet and loving character.
http://chrisoatley.com/character-design-goes-deep/
Describing the characters is only a part of the script's purpose. A good script describes the settings and more importantly, describes the mood of the scenes. This was something i made sure my script did well, just describing isn't enough. Behind the description has to be a rooted feeling which makes it's way through to the audience through the description. This plays a big part in making the audience connect emotively with the story.
Below is the short narrative i produced:
If i gave this to Guy and Meg how it is, it would be hard for Guy to produce the storyboards from and for Meg to produce the item designs. To make it easier for the rest of the team to work from i formatted it into a screenplay.
Screenplays are almost always used in the animation and film pipeline. A screenplay condenses and formats the story into a document which is easier for the rest of the production team to work from.
Below is an example of a screenplay for Pixar's 'UP':
When writing a screenplay it is important to consider the formatting rules. These rules include capitalizing characters and items the pre-production team have to design, speech is central and although descriptions can be detailed, they are condensed to give only what's needed.
Below is my screenplay, which evolved from the previous short story i wrote:
Also this week i started worked more on the visual development. Originally we wanted to use charcoal and have a more sketchy style, however i don't think this style suits the final idea as well as other mediums might.
I did a test of the scene in charcoal pencil just to see how it would look and to be honest i quite like it but i would like more colour to be implemented. I like the way the lighting dynamics can be clearly established through charcoal and the sketchy look of the lines. I feel like charcoal could be used well to tell our story however i don't want to dismiss colour as colour can often be a great storytelling device.
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